The Loch Alpine Improvement Association’s Annual Meeting is scheduled for Wednesday March 23, 2016. Sign-in will begin at 7:00 p.m. and the meeting will begin at 7:30 p.m. Refreshments will be available!

Please attend, participate, and vote.

Members in good standing will be voting on five open seats on the Board of Directors, the 2016-2017 annual assessment, and a proposed change to By-laws.

Don’t miss your chance to be one of 2 lucky winners to receive a waiver of one-half of their annual assessment. You must vote to be eligible to win, but you do not need to be present.

If you are unable to attend the meeting, please vote, sign, and send your voting proxy forms to Select Community Management, 4045 Stone School Rd., Ann Arbor, MI 48108 (must be postmarked by 3/21/2016) or drop them off before 9:00PM on March 22nd to:

2016 Assessment and Budget Clarification:
It has come to the Board’s attention that information regarding this year’s assessment and budget has been selectively distributed to resident mailboxes. The Board, none of whom have directly received the document, have received questions from concerned residents regarding this material.

After careful consideration of our current financial position and the future outlook, your Board of Directors is recommending no increase for the upcoming year, keeping the annual assessment at $725. The budget for next year was thoughtfully developed, as always, to continue necessary and proper maintenance of existing LAIA assets and services, and to maintain appropriate reserves. In addition, the Board considered potential expenses related to the the ongoing work the action teams have been doing, and feel that we have sufficient fund balances to cover the contingencies that are currently known. To date only one of the action teams have requested funds, which was funded out of our existing reserves.

The Board chose not to compromise Loch Alpine today to fund unknown fears about the future. Loch Alpine has historically relied on good community response to emergent issues, including special assessments that were then specifically voted on by the community as a whole to address concrete and defined problems. The Board chose not to put forward a budget that compromises the necessary support for our assets and services, and chose not to hit residents for arbitrary amounts of money for unspecified solutions to the pending AACC sale. The action teams have been doing outstanding work, and we are grateful to the many volunteers involved, and we will soon have recommendations from each of them with real dollar amounts to explain the financial implications of each alternative. The neighborhood will then decide what they are willing to spend on any specific course of action regarding the AACC property -- without compromising what we have now.

Your elected Board has worked diligently to engage and inform the entire community by putting together factual information for the community to work with. We will continue to engage the entire community, not just vocal subsets, to present facts and data to drive decisions moving forward.

LASA Water Main Replacement Update:
Bob Sendra and Dino Anastasia attended a recent meeting of LASA’s Operating Committee to address concerns regarding the water main replacement project currently underway. The work being done was reviewed in some detail with explanations given for the current state of affairs. Bottom line, is that we feel more confident than we did before the meeting that LASA is providing adequate oversight and will work with the LAIA to address any issues that arise. LASA provided assurances that all work is and will continue to be done to contract specifications and best practices
for pavement, shoulder work, etc. LASA has an engineer on site who is monitoring the work closely and regularly and is satisfied that the contractor has everything going properly.

While there have been some delays due to late arrivals of materials, preliminary restoration work has begun where possible. The current projection is that the replacement work will continue for another 4-6 weeks, with the final restoration work ramping up in May.

We look forward to seeing you at the LAIA Annual Meeting on Wednesday!